Battle of Amiens (1918)

The Battle of Amiens was a major battle of the Western Front of World War I which was fought from 8 to 12 August 1918 when Allied forces launched a major offensive against German forces in Picardy, France. In one of the first armored offensives in history, the Allies initiated their "Hundred Days Offensive" with an offensive that took 50,000 German prisoners.

Background
By the summer of 1918, the German offensives begun in the spring had lost momentum. American troops were arriving in France in ever increasing numbers. From the Michael Offensive in March to the May Artois offensive, Germany had achieved striking successes. However, the arrival of US troops, backed by the country's financial might, changed the strategic balance. By July, the United States had helped the French defeat the last German offensive at the Second Battle of the Marne.

Battle
Allied Supreme Commander General Ferdinand Foch called for a continuous series of offensives to maintain pressure on the Germans after Allied success at the Second Battle of the Marne. At a meeting on 24 July, British commander-in-chief Field Marshal Douglas Haig agreed to Foch's plan. Britain's Fourth Army, commanded by General Henry Rawlinson, supported by the French, was to attack Amiens. The assault would be led by the Australian corps under General John Monash and the Canadian corps under General Arthur Currie - the Canadians and Australians being considered the freshest, hardest-fighting troops on the Western Front. The Australian Corps was already part of the Fourth Army and had carried out a successful attack on German positions at Hamel near Amiens on 4 July. The Canadians, however, were 70 miles to the north in Flanders. If the Germans became aware of the Canadian corps' shift south to Amiens, they would have clear warning of the offensive.

Deceiving the enemy
To hide the movement from observation by German aircraft, the Canadians marched only by night. Two Canadian battalions were left in Flanders and their radio operators kept up a constant stream of traffic to persuade the Germans the Corps was still in place. The deception worked perfectly. More than 2,000 guns and around 1,800 aircraft were assembled for the attack, but any increase in artillery bombardment or air activity was avoided, leaving the Germans unaware of the troops' presence. More than 500 tanks, including 342 heavy Mark Vs and 72 lighter Whippets, were concealed in the countryside to the rear of the troops, undetected by the enemy. As the tanks moved up to the front under cover of darkness on the eve of the attack, the noise of their engines was masked by aircraft flying back and forth overhead.

At 4:20 AM on 8 August, the British artillery opened a devastating bombardment accurately targeted at all parts of the German defenses, from the frontline trenches to the gun batteries at the rear. Taken completely unawares, German troops scarcely had time to man defensive positions before Australian and Canadian troops were upon them, emerging out of mist and smoke.

After the attack
Amply supplied with grenades, rifle grenades, and Lewis guns, the Allied troops set about clearing the German trenches. Tanks provided support, trundling forward to take out strongpoints that might have held up the advance. The Germans were outnumbered and stunned by the unexpectedness of the offensive. The second wave of Allied troops, following up the first attack, passed large numbers of German prisoners heading in the opposite direction. By the afternoon of 8 August, the Australians and Canadians had penetrated the German defenses to a depth of about 7.5 miles.

From that point on, familiar problems accumulated. Supply and communication difficulties slowed the pace of the advance, giving German reserves time to arrive and stiffen their defenses. Tanks suffered mechanical failure or were taken out by German antitank weapons. After considerable hesitation, Haig and Foch agreed to halt the attack on 15 August. This was a wise decision. Instead of persisting in the face of mounting casualties and diminishing guns, as had happened before, the Allies would now repeatedly shift the point of assault, holding on to each limited advance.

German reaction
Meanwhile, the German high command was appalled by the readiness of so many German troops to surrender and the worsening balance of forces at the front. Convinced that victory was no longer possible, General Erich Ludendorff offered to resign. His resignation was refused and the German government continued to assure its people of imminent victory. In private, however, the German leadership began looking for a way out of the war.

Aftermath
The Battle of Amiens marked the beginning of the Hundred Days Offensive, a series of operations that lasted until the end of the war. On 21 August, less than a week after the Amiens operation halted, the British 3rd Army mounted an attack to the north and took the town of Albert. With the aid of the Fourth Army, they took Bapaume on 26 August. Meanwhile, General Charles Mangin's French 10th Army attacked successfully at the Aisne.

The American Expeditionary Force (AEF) saw its first independent action at the St. Mihiel salient on 12 September. It then attacked, with French support, in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, part of a wider Allied assault on the German Hindenburg Line. Germany was further thwarted when its Allies - Austria-Hungary, Turkey, and Bulgaria - were defeated. In October, the German leaders sought an armistice.